


methods of survival

by petalbypetal



Category: Snowpiercer (TV 2020)
Genre: Antagonistic Romance, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, F/M, Love/Hate Relationship, No Strings Attached, layton is just going through it man he’s got a lot on his mind, sex in the background of a whole lot of introspective rambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25504531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalbypetal/pseuds/petalbypetal
Summary: Life on Snowpiercer is messy and complicated, but this is simple.
Relationships: Andre Layton/Melanie Cavill
Kudos: 29





	methods of survival

**Author's Note:**

> a rambling fic because I needed it. don’t @ me ok they have tension wE ALL SAW IT

It’s almost two years since he left it behind, but Andre still remembers how cold the Tail could get, how it was worse some days than others but always there, always pressing in at the edges and creeping closer inch by inch, an impending sense of doom that was impossible to shake. Most of the time it was all anyone could do to just find a warm body to help them get through the coldest days and nights, someone willing to huddle close and share whatever heat and comfort they could to help ride out the cold and keep going to see a warmer day.

The cold doesn’t breach the walls uptrain, but there’s a lot besides cold that wears a person down and has them looking for anything to ease the pain, and what Melanie Cavill has become to him is just that; a warm body to press close to. A way to make surviving a little easier.

The first time it happened was the result of high tensions and a near death experience, the second time a mutual method of coping, and the third time made a habit. They don’t talk much beyond what matters most — the latest atrocities to try to shut down, the seemingly endless power struggles that claim more lives with every passing revolution, the tenuous grip they have on survival as they try to keep just one step ahead of the end of all life on Earth. Neither of them mind it. There’s no point in idle banter, no point in trying to make meaningless conversation, because that’s not what either of them need or even want, and sometimes survival is as much about one as it is the other. 

Life on _Snowpiercer_ is messy and complicated, but this is simple. Melanie seeks him out in his compartment and presses close with nothing but a murmur of his name, digs her hands into his hair and sinks her teeth into his bottom lip, and that’s enough for them both. Andre responds in kind, as he always does, and the breaths that pass between them become all he can hear. They don’t need to speak in these moments where contact is vastly more important, where the touch of their hands and the press of their bodies say more than any words possibly could, and it’s one of the few things he feels grateful for.

Melanie backs him into the dresser hard enough that it rattles. He grips her neck, and for all the times he used to picture doing such a thing it was never in this way or this context, with her hands sliding up under his shirt and her thigh between his legs and her mouth on his, warm and demanding and urgent enough to make him forget the cold exists at all. She tastes like lipstick, of all goddamn things.

Andre pushes her away a step with the hand around her neck, takes an unsteady breath as he studies her, the wild look burning in her eyes, the frantic rise and fall of her chest. She doesn’t get this out of sorts unless she’s been shaken by something.

He wets his lips with a quick dart of his tongue as he meets her eyes again. She wouldn’t endanger the train, but he has to know. “Something happen?” He asks, short and curt in a voice that’s more unsteady than he’d like.

Melanie looks back at him, lips parted, and she shakes her head as her eyes flicker to his mouth and then back up. “Nothing that can’t wait until morning.”

That might have given him pause once, but now he doesn’t question it, he simply pulls her back in with all the urgency she’d shown him. It’s a strange thing, trusting her enough to take her at her word, and part of him wonders when that happened without him realizing, but he doesn’t dwell on it as she strips out of her jacket and urges him out of his own. Between the two of them they make it to the bed, shy their clothes and a shred or two of dignity. 

His hands find Melanie’s waist as she pushes him onto his back and straddles his hips, and she doesn’t let up or slow down. She braces her hand in the middle of his chest and sinks down on him with a sigh, her eyes fluttering shut and her head tilting to the side, her brows drawing together in a frown of concentration. The scope of the world narrows down to her and him and the width of the bed, the points of contact where they connect, and Andre feels some of the weight slip from his shoulders.

It’s a practiced dance they do now. They know where and how to touch each other, what they want and what they need from this. The first couple times it took a minute for them both to forget it wasn’t a fight — and sometimes it still feels that way, all teeth and nails and hands around throats. Their shared history can’t be forgotten, no matter how often they try to leave it at the door.

After a while, Andre stopped trying to pretend the woman in his bed was anyone but Melanie. It became too difficult. Even her voice — he heard it every day for seven years before ever laying eyes on her, and that voice which has haunted his dreams and nightmares alike is the same one that murmurs and gasps his name like music when they’re alone, and he can’t separate the two in his mind, can’t even attempt to. He doesn’t know where he would even start.

So he has learned to live with it. With her. The woman who saved humankind but couldn’t spare a little humanity. It makes him angry to this day, to this moment — but it is what it is. And at the end of the day, there’s comfort unique to falling into the arms of someone who understands the power and weight of being a symbol.

He looks up at her, and there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing her disheveled, flushed, vulnerable in a way she rarely shows. Sometimes he can’t stop thinking about how she’s hurt him and those he loves and things turn contentious, but not always. Sometimes he can appreciate her virtues, her heart and her mind and her dedication. He can focus on those things that make her just as human as him.

He reaches up and threads his fingers into her hair at the nape of her neck, and he drags her down and kisses her. She takes his face in her hands, kisses him back with a soft sound that stirs something in his chest, and he lets it all fall away.


End file.
